He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God, knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what He affirms of Himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth resolves itself into a theological truth. . . .

Through Catholicism man recognized the law of order, and through man this order entered society. The redemption regained for the moral world the laws which it had lost through prevarication and sin. Catholic dogma became the criterion for the sciences, Catholic ethics the guide for human actions, and Catholic charity the standard for the affections. Human conscience, freed from the corrosive action of error and sin, was thus enlightened. . . .

Order was thus transmitted from the religious into the moral world, and passed from the moral into the political world. The Catholic God, the creator and preserver of the universe, subjects all things to the law of his Providence, and governs them by his vicars. . . . The [very] idea of authority is of Catholic origin. . . . There is nothing more solemn, more impressive . . . than the words which the Church addressed to Christian princes at their consecration: "Receive this scepter as an emblem of the sacred power confided to you in order that you may protect the weak, sustain the wavering, correct the vicious, and conduct the good in the way of salvation. Receive this scepter as the rule of divine justice, which upholds the good and punished the wicked; learn by it to love justice, and to abhor iniquity". . . .

[The Church] has, in the defense of [true] liberty, opposed those kings who have made a despotic use of power, and she has maintained the principle of authority in opposition to those nations who have attempted to effect an absolute emancipation. . . . There is no truth that she has failed to proclaim, no error that she has not anathematized. Liberty in truth she has always held sacred, but liberty in error is as hateful to her as error itself. She looks upon error as born and existing without rights, and she has therefore pursued, resisted, and extirpated it in the most hidden recesses of the human mind. . . .

[T]he Church alone has the right of affirmation and negation, and . . . there can exist no right to deny what she asserts, or to assert what she denies. When society forgot the doctrinal decisions of the Church, and consulted either the press or the pulpit, the magazines or the public assemblies, as to what was truth or what was error, then all minds confounded truth and error, and society was plunged into a region of shadows and illusions. . . .

The doctrinal intolerance of the Church has saved the world from chaos. It has placed political, domestic, social, and religious truths beyond controversy. These primitive and sacred truths are not subject to discussion, because they are the basis of all discussion. The moment there arises a doubt about them, that moment the mind becomes unsettled, being lost between truth and error, and the clear mirror of human reason is obscured. . . .

As there is no good except in order, everything not in conformity with order must be evil; nor can there be any evil which does not consist in a subversion of order; therefore, as order is the supreme good, disorder is the supreme evil, because outside of disorder there can be no evil, and outside of order no good. . . . [W]e can deduce . . . that order, or what is the same thing, supreme good, consists in the preservation of all things in that connection in which God placed them, when he created them out of nothing; and that disorder, or, what is its equivalent, supreme evil, consists in breaking this admirable connection and supreme harmony. . . .

Discussion . . . [is] the universal dissolvent. . . . According to Catholic doctrine, man fell only because he entered into an argument with the woman, and woman fell because she listened to the devil. . . .

The fundamental error of liberalism is, that it considers questions of government as alone important, when they are in reality of no consequence whatever, compared to those of religious and social order. . . .

But if we consider the rationalist theory, from which [both liberalism and socialism] . . . have their origin, it will be seen that rationalism is the sin that most resembles original sin, being, like it, an actual error, and the productive cause of all error. . . . In fact, rationalism is at once deism, pantheism, humanism, manicheism, fatalism, skepticism, and atheism. . . .

The liberal school holds it as certain, that there is no evil except that which results from the political institutions which we have inherited from past ages, and that the supreme good consists in the overthrow of these institutions. The greater number of socialists consider it as established, that there is no other evil than that which exists in society, and the great remedy is to be found in the complete subversion of social institutions. The liberals affirm that good may be realized even in the present day; and the socialists assert that this golden era cannot commence except in times yet to come.

Thus, both the one and the other, placing the realization of the supreme good in the entire destruction of the present order--the political order, according to the liberal school, and the social order, according to the socialist schools--they agree with regard to the real and intrinsic goodness of man, who, they contend, must necessarily be the intelligent and free agent in effecting this subversion. This conclusion has been explicitly announced by the socialist schools, and it is implicitly contained in the theory maintained by the liberals. . . .

But the Catholic and rationalist theories are not only utterly incompatible, but likewise antagonistic. All subversion, whether it be in the political or social order, is condemned by the Church as foolish and useless. The rationalist theories condemn all moral reform in man as stupid and of no avail. And thus, the ones as well as the others are consistent in their condemnation; because, if evil neither exists in the state nor in society, why and wherefore require the overthrow of society and of the state? And, on the contrary, if evil exists neither in individuals nor proceeds from them, why and for what cause desire the interior reformation of man? . . .